


Somehow

by GermanShepherd



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Crisis of Faith, Existential Crisis, Gen, Melancholy, identity crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 14:39:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1351150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GermanShepherd/pseuds/GermanShepherd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Uprooted from his homeland and surrounded by Northmen, Athelstan has become someone else. He's not sure who, but what he does know is the arm-ring around his wrist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somehow

**Author's Note:**

> Set after S2E3 but before E4.

It was the new weight around his wrist that finally served as some tangible proof of his existence. The arm ring was who he was. The monk hadn’t existed for a long time; the slave was also long gone. He supposed he was a Saxon – but then he was a stranger in his own homeland. He wasn’t truly a Northman. Now, he could know for certain that he was a warrior, if nothing else. Monk, slave, freedman, warrior. 

His faith had wavered and waned and he had forgotten the passages he once knew so deeply. His control over his passions had slipped – he still wasn’t sure if he had sinned at Uppsala, and he wasn’t even sure he believed in sin anymore. His tongue had bent in prayers, eventually hollow and forceless. Now it fluttered uncertainly, God’s and Odin’s and Thor’s names together side by side. He wasn’t a Christian. He wasn’t exactly a heathen, either. Was he? He had lost his faith and hardly noticed.

He had picked up the axe and shield and never looked back. How could he have come so far? How had he put himself at the mercy of Ragnar’s sword-tip? How had he driven iron into a fellow Saxon’s breast? He hadn’t felt horror. He didn’t think he would be punished by God for shedding his monk’s mantle. He wasn’t even afraid. He just drove onwards with a dull will, going where the web of fate led him, like the headstrong Northmen. No longer was he the meek, obeisant slave. Somehow he had changed so much to be unrecognizable; somehow his heart had changed without him noticing. Now he was too different to mourn his old self. He looked back with the vague memory of his old devotions to his kingdom and to his God. He picked up the axe and shield and stood alongside Ragnar with his feet planted firmly into the earth. Somehow he had switched to the other side without knowing quite how or when.

What was it, to fight? To kill? At first it was the horror of his cloistered brothers being slaughtered. Then it was the motions on the training ground, friend against friend. Then it was Ragnar’s eyes behind a shield rim, shoulder-to-shoulder in the shieldwall. Somehow Athelstan had done what was needed to earn his arm-ring. In the battle for his life, he hadn’t hesitated. And afterward, he hadn’t looked back.

If he said he didn’t know Odin, he would be lying. Odin was what guided his hand and shield in the midst of battle. Odin was the rush of energy, the focus at the point of a sword. He was the gripping terror and the freeing mercilessness. The stench of death and the sticky touch of another man’s blood. Athelstan knew Odin. Athelstan had an arm-ring now because of Him. He wasn’t afraid of killing.

He was afraid of what that meant.

He could tell Ragnar where the Christians hid their wealth. He could explain what a saint was and why their bones were holy. He could say how a miracle was an impossible deed. The book was in his hand, but offered no solace. These things were close to him, but he no longer felt them. It was strange to be so familiar and so cold at the same time. Familiar, because he could pick up the pen and ink and sweep across the parchment. Cold, because he could strike down a monk by his own hand without hesitation. He didn’t know who exactly he was in that church, but he knew he wasn’t a man of God. He remembered the weight of apostasy, and he remembered how the idea of it used to make him shudder and whisper prayers for those damned souls. The accusation made him hesitate out of the weight of that memory. But that was all it was. No more threat than a memory.

“You’re one of us!”  
“…Once.”

He aligned himself with the Northmen. So the English thought he was. Did that make him one?

He looked at his deeds and knew that if Athelstan the monk could see him now, he would have crossed himself and made benedictions. He wasn’t sure if he should feel guilty for doing things he would have thought wrong. It unsettled him. But it didn’t make him feel. He didn’t feel. Whoever he was now, he wasn’t a man who mourned the present, or the past. Whoever.

These things dwelt in the weight around his wrist.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in one night after some severe Athelstan feels. I've edited it once but have no plans to continue, so I apologise for any low quality or flow issues.


End file.
